Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#601

Post by jayd16 » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:30 AM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #451

bastawhiz wrote: post #185

I'm dumbfounded at Google's lack of planning on this. I tried Stadia, and they had (have?) so few games that they seem to have neither search nor pagination on the list that you can play. None of the games are ones that I care about. It feels like they could have—at the cost of short-term profit and pride—partnered with Valve and shipped something mind-blowing. But instead we're left with a bunch of AAA games that fe…

> partnered with Valve and shipped something mind-blowing Why would Valve partner with anyone? They don’t even need to make games anymore. They could fire the majority of their company and run on a skeleton crew and still be making a fortune years later. Literally don’t think Google can afford them. The offer would be “hey wanna go from doing almost zero work and making a fortune to making a little more and having to…

I think the parent thinks Google or Valve can wave a wand and suddenly all these games will be ported to a new platform despite no user base, little incentive to be first on the platform, and murky licensing.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#602

Post by NobodyNada » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

alisonkisk wrote: post #576

vadym909 wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opposite. My kid built a gaming PC and uses it for school from home and gaming from 7am-9pm or 90% of his waking hours

That doesn't sound healthy.

Perhaps not. But I'm in a similar boat: with remote lectures, online homework, work-from-home, and not being able to go places with friends, we don't exactly get much of a choice.

COVID sucks, but at least vadym909's kid has been able to make the most of it by investing in a usable setup and gaining some valuable hands-on experience with computers.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#603

Post by pdpi » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

bastawhiz wrote: post #540

hmage wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google had to solve same problem any new traditional gaming console has to solve -- get publishers interested in creating for that console. Good luck with that. The moat is so high that even if you have tech from year 2222, the business side trumps technology.

If anyone is going to compete with Microsoft , of all companies, I'd expect it to be Google.

Except Microsoft is investing heavily in first party games, buying loads of studios and letting them retain a lot of independence. They’re approaching the streaming service as an extension of the Xbox experience. It’s a much more robust strategy all around

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#604

Post by thesandlord » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:40 AM UTC

ramphastidae wrote: post #560

rossjudson wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should look into that Google Cloud thing.

Profit figures have never been released for Google Cloud.

Google Cloud is not profitable because they invest all revenue into growth, as they should be doing. If they focused on profitability they would have never caught up with AWS.

(I'm ex-GCP)

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#605

Post by JeremyNT » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:41 AM UTC

I really wanted to check out Stadia! It seemed like it might be a decent value and a good way to play recent games without a high powered PC. Unfortunately, I have the latest Google chromecast with Google tv... and it doesn't support Stadia.

I swear it seems like Google is entirely unable to commit to anything new. How much have they wasted on Stadia? What do they have to show for it?

Dabbling and half assing everything, pissing away money only to pull the plug. I'm glad they didn't bother to support their flagship chromecast for this thing, so I never wasted any time on it. At this point it's clearly destined for the Google graveyard.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#606

Post by sipos » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #28

Some of the industry's largest players have been in the game development space for 30+ years and even then are only marginally successful. Xbox itself was on the brink of being shut down/sold off a few years ago. What exactly did Google (and Amazon/Apple/Facebook) expect would happen? Focusing on Stadia's strength as a platform seems to be a good move forward. It is a technically sound service. I'm sure the massive b…

They also desperately need to improve things like the store, which has no wish lists, no way to see all of the titles in specific categories, etc, at least on mobile.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#607

Post by themacguffinman » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:56 AM UTC

mehlmao wrote: post #553

enos_feedler wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question for me is if it works on a cheap notebook or on the road, why wouldn't you just want to play it this way even when you are at home? Why do I want to own anything? I just want to play the games I bought.

> Why do I want to own anything? Because Stadia offers an inferior experience to local rendering. In particular, the way the video compression crushes all dark colors into a single shade of black. Plus, when Google kills Stadia in a year, you'll have lost the games you purchased and paid a subscription fee for. I was excited to see Google make a game that would only be possible on Stadia, be it an MMO, races with hun…

Stadia doesn't need to be better than local rendering, it just needs to let me play my game with an acceptable quality. I'm not 100% satisfied with the current quality and I'd like it to improve, but as I grow older I'm more interested in experiencing the game's content rather than worrying about how superior my resolution/PQ/fps is. I don't care if I lose the games I purchased 2 years ago, once I've played the game for a while I'm done with it, I'm not interested in continuously revisiting old games over and over again.

Honestly, I'm sick of the limitations of traditional gaming. If that means some compression quality loss and being somewhat inferior to local rendering, then that's the price I'm willing to pay. Playing games is not one of the most important parts of my life, but with the amount of crap I've put up with dealing with flexibility and compatibility issues of a superior local rendering setup for modern games, you might think it was.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#608

Post by asiachick » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:56 AM UTC

jsploit wrote: post #535

asiachick wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hasn't? https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

Perhaps I missed it, but that only seems to mention YouTube revenue - not profit.

Sure, so what evidence is there that youtube does not make a profit?

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#609

Post by asiachick » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:59 AM UTC

ramphastidae wrote: post #561

asiachick wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hasn't? https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

No, it hasn’t. Did you read your own link?

Yes, I did read it. Nothing in the article suggests youtube didn't make a profit. I get that revenue != profit. What evidence do you have that they don't

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#610

Post by eitland » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:59 AM UTC

ruined wrote: post #550

mckeed wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because the last product they put full commitment into was Google Plus.

no they didn't. google plus was half-assed, underhanded, and self-destructive. profiles were automatically created if you had another google profile, pissing everyone off. they provided essentially no feature advantage over other social networks, which means they had no weapon to fight against network effect. they enforced a real name policy even as facebook became notorious for doing the same. they aggressively bann…

> no they didn't. google plus was half-assed, underhanded, and self-destructive.

Google+ the social network was surprisingly nice to use especially towards the end.

> profiles were automatically created if you had another google profile, pissing everyone off.

Yep, that was part of the commitment. They were fully committed and did it even how many people the annoyed along the way.

> they provided essentially no feature advantage over other social networks,

Towards the end it had a lot of advantages like one login account but still true pseudonymity wrt to other users as well as at least one advantage towards each other network.

Of course by then they'd made everyone angry and made everyone here shun them

> which means they had no weapon to fight against network effect.

Probably more what I wrote above IMO. Mixing the brilliant Google+ social network with the despised Google+ identity solution wasn't the most brilliant thing they did. Of course hindsight is 20/20 but still.

> they enforced a real name policy even as facebook became notorious for doing the same.

Yep. And when they finally created the best solution the web have seen so far it was too late.

> they aggressively banned business accounts, with obvious results.

Can't remember it but wouldn't surprise me at all.